


Crows in the Wheatfield

by seraphim_grace



Series: Angel 'Verse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-29 08:10:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/seraphim_grace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final arc in the Angel Verse<br/>John Winchester met an oracle in a diner in California setting in motion a chain of events that would see a war on three fronts, Heaven, Hell and everything in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which John Winchester makes a very strange bargain

The diner was in California, that meant that next to the usual diner fare there were tuna steaks and they put orange in the iced tea, but the coffee was good and strong so John Winchester was willing to live with the quirks. It was almost thick enough to chew, which was exactly how he liked it. It burned like ashes going down, swilling around the gaps in his teeth. Most diners had coffee that was scalded and left on the hot plate too long, they didn't use enough grounds and even then it was cheap grounds, but the extra couple of cents on the price really made the difference. People thought that good coffee meant all the froth and frizz and additives that places like Starbucks added, but good coffee was simple, hot not boiling water, decent grounds and enough of them.

This place for those few extra cents didn't use coffee pots but French presses, a Californian quirk, even in such a random place like Jericho. The booths had wooden benches, easy to clean and remarkably comfortable and warm, even if they didn't look it, and the waitress was as merry as waitresses got, which meant she was one step above mostly homicidal and surly. She was just short of retirement and wore a lemon yellow uniform that was free of splatters and coffee stains, but there was a white cloth over her apron that looked like it had seen better years.

"You want some more coffee, hun?" she asked, looking at the empty press. Three dollars for a press seemed like a lot, but it was two and a half cups, three if he was stingy, so it was cheap for the price. Most diners offered a bottomless cup, this one didn't, but it had done an all day breakfast that was enough to last him all day, as he scribbled and wrote in his journal. The case was simple enough, solved and he just needed to trick the spirit back to it's original home to destroy it, the bones were cremated and spread over the river years before. He looked at the image of the woman in white he had drawn years before, sketched in with a black ball point pen, cross hatched to create shading because John had liked art when he was in high school and the creatures gave him a chance to exercise that. His boys were both completely useless with a pencil, neither of them could draw a stick figure worth a damn.

The meeting had long since been prearranged, it should be a simple thing, but Caleb was on the other side of the diner watching surreptitiously even as he wolfed down the meatloaf and potatoes, and Rufus was outside in the car, both of them with their cells ready waiting for John to press the send button and call them both to action. This was a public place but John didn't know the man he was dealing with, he didn't think he was a demon but he had been wrong before, and he wasn't taking chances. But what the man offered...

The man wore a charcoal wool suit, with waist coat, but his light coloured shirt was open at the neck without a tie, although John suspected that he was used to one. Instead of leather shoes he wore a pair of patterned chucks with mismatched laces and on his wrist, incongruous with the very clearly expensive suit, was an old and very battered watch on a leather strap. He slid into the booth and raised his head. He had black hair and his eyes were brown, but very pale, like someone had watered down the colour and were almost yellow, but not that bright sickly yellow he knew to be the demon. He'd seen Him. This man wasn't Him, he just had very light brown eyes.

The man, who didn't bother to introduce himself ran his hand through his black hair and then readjusted his glasses, thin wire frames with small oblong lenses, very expensive glasses, in fact everything about the man except the watch screamed comfortable wealth. "John Winchester, I presume." He said and he had a bland accent, American but barely but there was nothing there to say where in America he had come from.

John gave a quick glance around the diner, just because the man had come in alone didn't mean he was alone. There was a family in the booth nearest the door, trying rather unsuccessfully to entice a toddler into devouring whatever on was the spoon but she was having none of it. There was a dark haired young man, perhaps twenty or thereabouts, Sam's age, John thought to himself, in torn jeans at the counter who was eating pie like he was making love to it and even then with some care, not missing a crumb and drinking tall glasses of milk, asking for another every time he finished it. John had noticed him wondering where it was going because the kid looked like he'd fall down a drain if he stepped sideways. An Indian businesswoman in a red suit was picking at her salad as she ummed and aahed down the phone, and at the door was some sort of David Bowie wannabe with bright pink trousers, a lime green shirt and illuminous orange hair, he was marching back and forth arguing with someone on the phone as he smoked cigarette after cigarette. He had been there, arguing before John had gone in, ordered and since finished his all day breakfast. John didn't think this man was alone, but it looked like he might be.

The man didn't bother to introduce himself. "You have the periapt?" He asked.

John put the box on the table. It was sort of anti climactic, surely powerful amulets that strange men phoned him about in the middle of the night that were clearly important to something shouldn't really be in a box for kitchen matches. The man didn't move for it but instead called over the waitress and ordered a long iced tea with extra ice and a twist of orange. This was delivered with a devastating and rather Byronic smile in a thick Georgia accent which had come out of nowhere. "I wish to make sure," he said turning to John, the accent vanishing just as quickly as it appeared, "that this is the right Periapt, I know Hunters have a tendency to store things they can't figure out how to destroy."

"Your description was very clear, a milky blue gem with a purple line through it, and an occlusion. A little gas bubble with a metal piece inside that rattled. It will be on a white metal setting that looks dirty,"

"Electrum." the man corrected.

"with an impressed woman on the back, on a very old leather thong, probably found in or around Salem." John continued.

At that the man nodded. "You looked it up, didn't you?" he asked, the waitress came over and gave him his iced tea and he thanked her in a syrupy drawl thick with Georgia slang.

"The stone is said to have several purposes, it's fluorite, I take it." The man nodded, "and worthless except for it's age to normal collectors."

"I am something of an eccentric." The man agreed, light flashing on his glasses. He shifted showing a bulge in his jacket that was clearly the outline of a holstered gun.

"But fluorite has some rather unique properties, they say it can suppress demonic attributes, and a friend tells me that the woman on the back is Inana removing her fluorite to enter the gates of hell."

"It is true," the man agreed, and took a long mouthful of the iced tea, looking clearly pleasantly surprised. "The stone can suppress some demonic attributes, this periapt has, among other purposes, the ability to mostly suppress the powers of a cambion." John's hand clutched tight enough around his cup that his knuckles went white. The man saw the expression and chuckled. "I'm not nearly stupid enough to make one of those, trust me." John had heard somewhere that only the people who couldn't be trusted were the ones who asked you to trust them. It was a good life rule.

"It has other properties though, it makes one immune to demonic influence." He reached into the pocket of his vest and pulled out a pair of small silver chains, "these will prevent possession, get them checked if you don't believe me. Now, the other part of our bargain." His smile was predatory, dangerous and there was something about him that burned like the sun, but it was a fire that consumed. He was perhaps in his early thirties but there was something about him that suggested years, ages perhaps, and none of it pleasant. He was made cruel, and John didn't like him. "Do you want to test me?" the man said, "a splash of holy water in my iced tea, although I'll drink it straight from the flask if you want, silver on my skin, a drop of blood, want to see how I react to the word Christo." It was as if the man had read his mind.

"We don't have to do this," he continued, "there are other ways to get what I want, other hunters with similar trinkets, ones that don't want such expensive trades?"

"Then why me?" John asked.

"Because I can," the man grinned again, that arc of Cheshire Cat insincerity. "Here," he threw an old photograph on the table, it was black and white but it was perfectly clear what it was, a line of men, air line pilots from world war two, gathered around a bar where a thin man with slicked back hair looked uncertainly at the camera as he rubbed a glass with a towel. In the centre of the picture, wearing old fashioned khaki's with his cap perched on his head like a crown was a man John had never seen before, but the eyes were clear. This man was not human. "Your yellow eyed nemesis." He said, "this picture was taken just after the war, but he'll have long since gotten rid of that host. His name is Azazel, he calls himself the First of the Fallen but I don't know if that's true or not," from his pocket he pulled a manilla envelope. "This is what I could find out, but there is a catch, Winchester, and you better pay attention, because my advice does not come cheaply."

This was what John wanted, this man, this creature, knew the yellow eyed demon well enough to set him on his trail. "There are several ways to defeat him but the one that kills him is a gun, a very special revolver made by a man called Samuel Ephesus Colt, it will come with several bullets, these are as precious as the gun itself, a normal bullet with harm a demon but the true bullets will kill it. Do you understand?" John nodded, he had heard the legends of such a gun. "But there is a catch, you can't be the one to kill him, you try and you will waste your chance." John wanted to howl like a wounded animal but he said nothing, "keep Dean safe, do everything in your power to keep him safe and he will destroy the demon once and for all." The man paused, "the gun is his, it will know him and he has been chosen for things greater than either of us." He stopped. "You'll have to leave them to find the gun, leave them the journal they'll need it, but yes, John Winchester, he will die, does that information fulfil our bargain?" He hadn't even made a move towards the matchbox.

"You're not the kind of person to do anything, even a bargain unless you're getting the better end of the deal." John said it bluntly. His kind were all the same, they had plans within plans within plans. Even his back up plans had back up plans.

"This would be where I confess to how the thing has wronged me, right?" the man said, "where I have some terrible malicious plan and horrid end game, my actions are my own, and they will remain so." He drained the glass of iced tea, then from his pocket pulled a pair of hundred dollar bills and threw them on the table. "But you're not the only one who knows one of the kids he marked," the light flashed on his glasses, hiding his amber coloured eyes completely. "Perhaps you know this," he gave something of a gallic shrug, "but you might be better off putting a bullet in sam's brain, demon tainted Talents can't be trusted, no matter how much the Talent itself wants to be good he will always serve the interests of the demon." It was an odd word the man used, Talent. John had encountered it before, he had found a journal of a psychic in Maine who had spoken of Talents and Mundanes. "Of course there is more than one kind of taint, just as there are so many types of talents, it would do the demons good to remember that they are not the top of the food chain."

"What else is there?" John's voice was barely a whisper.

He half expected the man to answer "me" and John would have, there and then, believed it to be true, instead the man just smiled and said. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." He pocketed the match box and turned. The soles of his chucks were, John noticed as he walked away, the same colour as his eyes.

John looked around the diner again, at the young couple with the baby, at the business woman with the hard black eyes and the boy with his pie. He'd be about that age, John thought, marked by the demon for his army of Talents. He felt nauseous. The oracle stopped at the door, and nodded to the man with the bright orange hair, who was still arguing on the phone, before he walked out of view. The boy at the counter finished his pie and then drained his milk. He put a bill on the counter with a smile, thanked the cook and left. John waited to see if the woman would as well but she didn't.

He looked at the two hundred dollar bills before he exchanged them for a twenty and a ten, still leaving the woman a very large tip. It wasn't unusual for one person to pay and another to change the bills for the same amount to make it easier, to turn a twenty into two tens to make room in his wallet. What the waitress didn't know couldn't hurt her. This was enough to feed him for a few weeks at most, the Oracle had to know he'd do it.

Bobby would want to know what the man had said, he'd want to look at the photograph, he'd want to make plans, but South Dakota was a long way away and there was a woman in white haunting the town. People had died. But Mary had died too, and it hadn't been as quick as those horrid faithless men. He'd given his entire life to this hunt, he'd raised his boys to do it, what was this town with it's silly little spirit and it's faithless men and it's broken wives.

The oracle had told him to leave the journal, that was easy enough done, he stood up, nodding to Caleb before he left. The oracle wouldn't lie, but he wondered why he had wanted that periapt, an amulet that didn't have any value unless you were trying to subdue a cambion and no one had seen one of those in a thousand years.

John climbed into his truck with the promise ringing in his ears. Dean would kill the demon, and he would use Samuel Colt's gun to do it, but John had to watch Sam closely, he was, to use the oracle's words, tainted.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which an oracle meddles, though he really should know better

Two weeks before Dean Winchester went to his brother in Stanford he recieved a very strange visit in a soul food restaurant in Baton Rouge. Dean is sat a table in the corner, where he can watch everyone come and go, eating fried chicken and waffles with syrup and washing it down with healthy slurps of sweet tea. He is of the opinion that food this good should constitute a religious experience and has pasted, with a glue stick he keeps for just this purpose, the reciept and address into his journal, a moleskin thing much smaller than his dad's. His ball point pen is chewed at the end and the plastic cap which told it's colour is long since gone. 

The man sits down in the one chair opposite him. He's a young man, older than Dean but younger than his dad, with black hair with white roots, like it's naturally white but dyed black and his roots are showing. He's wearing a pair of black horn rimmed glasses, like that guy from the Talking Heads, Dean thinks in his own head, mentally recording everything in case it needs to go in the journal. He's wearing a vest and matching jacket over an old Quadrophenia tee and jeans and old chucks. His suit looks expensive but everything about him suggests a sort of unwilling chic, like someone used to suits who is now travelling and makes the effort because it feels off not to.

Dean answers the man's presumption with a grin, one that is dangerous and suggests that perhaps he didn't want interrupted. "How can I help?" because this is a public place and threats might get overheard.

"Dean Winchester, I presume." The man says and there is a hint of an accent when he speaks, like he spoke another language for a long time and the edges of it are still there. "Well this is awkward, I knew it would be, but." He smiles at Dean. He has remarkable eyes, a pale brown like amber, and a strong face. He reminds Dean of that fellow from Dharma and Greg, but he has a viciousness that grinning idiot lacked, and damn if Dean had never seen anyone who grinned as much as that man did.

"Who's asking?" Dean answers, never losing his own grin, one he knows is knife sharp. Sam used to call it his panty dropping smile because damn if it didn't make them lose their panties.

"That's not important yet." The man says, calling over the waitress. He orders the same as Dean has, fried chicken and waffles and sweet tea. "I missed this." He concedes.

"From the area?" Dean asks.

"Not even remotely." The man answers. "But this isn't a social call, unfortunately. I am an oracle, do you know what that means, Dean?"

"You can see the future." Dean answered, "but I thought Oracles were chicks and shit, and hung around in Greece being mysterious, not looking like." He looks the man up and down. He's a good looking man, Dean thinks, just really not his type. He prefers curves and soft edges. This man is like a magnum 45, sure he'll get the job done but you don't want to see the size of the exit wound when he's finished.

"Gender discrimination, Dean," the man answers with a warm smile, "in this day and age." His grin is just as shit eating and dangerous as Dean's own. 

"So, what's the word from God."

"First, oracles and prophets are completely different things." He says, "prophets get their message from on high, me, I'm just jacked into the time stream, completely different, for one thing, I don't get the mystical mumbo jumbo, just your Cordelia Chase migraines." The pop culture reference isn't lost on Dean. "You'll know about it soon enough," he says, "but that's not why I'm here."

"You want something killing." Dean doesn't phrase it as a question. He just mops up some of the syrup with a remnant of the waffles.

"Eventually." The Oracle tells him, then smiles at the waitress as she brings over his order, with more sweet tea for Dean, which he doesn't remember either of them ordering. "But that's not it either, you're a hunter, a good one, and soon you'll be a damn good one, the sort of hunter others hunters warn their kids about, but that's not it either. You see there's going to be a time when I owe you a favour, and I don't like to owe favours, they always cost more than you paid."

"I can get behind that." Dean says with a smirk, "so you want me to owe you the favour instead?" That has a dark and dangerous flavour in Dean's mouth.

"No," the oracle says. "When the time comes we'll be square, you're good for it, but you don't know that I am." The man cuts of a portion of his waffles with the edge of his fork, like he either has his hand on a gun, one that didn't show under the perfect lines of his tailored suit, or he's used to working with only one hand, like the other was incapacitated for a long time. Now Dean looks he can see a scar on the palm that looks like it was nasty when it happened. "And besides, you're going to do it anyway, that it aids me is just a bonus really, but I don't like debts, even ones I accrue accidentally."

"Whadd'ya mean?" Dean asks, sipping his tea, he has the suspicion a lot more is happening at this juncture than two men having a rather oblique conversation and eating very good soul food, the sort of soul food that redeems the soul, or damns it, god knows he called on Christ when he put it in his mouth the first time.

The oracle snorts with laughter, "I didn't come down in the last shower, Dean," he says, "I'm not giving that one away, but I do have a prophecy for you."

"Let me guess, I'll meet a tall dark stranger." Dean answers blithely, his hand tightening around the cup as the man adjusts his glasses.

"I can honestly say that when you meet the other half of your grace they will be like nothing in this word, why it's like they won't even be human." He was laughing at that, "I won't say there won't be danger, but you wouldn't like it if there weren't, it's why you left Cassie, isn't it?" 

"You know a lot for someone I've never met before." Dean doesn't even try to keep the threat from his voice.

"I don't lie, Dean," the oracle says, "I make a point of it, but the truth is amazingly flexible for something that breaks so easily. I know you, because you are going to do something that given the opportunity I'd do in a heartbeat because no one or thing hurts me or mine, but if I interfere things will get worse, do you understand that?" Dean just narrows his eyes and looks at the man. 

There are a few other diners in the restaurant, a small hole in the wall place with brightly painted wooden chairs and plastic table cloths, but the food is excellent. It's the sort of place that is recognised by word of mouth and doesn't need to expand. The oracle takes a bite of his chicken, picking it up with his fingers and using clever teeth. "When I saw what you would do I took an interest, I've been watching you for years, little things, to see why you would become a man who was so righteous in his indignation." The man is watching Dean for a reaction at that, but Dean doesn't give one, other than slurping more of his very sweet tea. He's not as new at this as you might think for his age. He's been hunting for twenty some years, it just means he started early.

"You can say it, Dean, you're not going to offend me."

"Then why not tell me your name?" Dean asks finally, so far the man has been remarkably cagey about such a simple detail and Dean knows he's not going to cave now.

"Most people just call me Oracle." He answers, "It's what I call myself in my head, the name my parents gave me is irrelevant, I don't use it, I have several cognomen."

"For a man who doesn't lie that's a lot of prevarication." Yeah, Dean thinks, a good two dollar word.

"I spent three years hiding from an organisation that wanted to use me for their own purposes." The Oracle answers, "a little subterfuge is necessary, and I never gave my name as what was on the driving license, but," he shrugs, "here's my truth for you, Dean Winchester. First always carry a knife, you'll never know when you'll need it."

"That your prophecy?" Dean pushes the empty plate in front of him.

"No, that's just a throw away piece of advice between hunters, you're very exposed here." He picks up the second chicken drumstick and picks at it with clever teeth and soft lips. "but this is my prophecy. There will be a time when you'll find yourself in a desert under a milk coloured sky. There will be the ruins of a castle there, and in the courtyard there is a fountain. You will give a man water. When this happens, and it will, remember this conversation and remember, you are loved, and you must have faith for help is coming." He chews and swallows, deliberately, and then takes a large swallow of the sweet tea. "I've been all over the world and only the South has sweet tea," he pulls a face, "because no one else wants it." He pushes the cup away in distaste.

"There are no castles in America." Dean says bluntly, ignoring the comment about the sweet tea.

"Never said it was in America, might want to get yourself a passport, I'm guessing it's the Middle East but I can't be sure, I don't recognise it. There are monsters all over the world, I saw a demon slain in Japan," the Oracle licks syrup from his lips before he continues. "I don't always get all the information, but that I can tell you this, you will find yourself in that castle, you will find the fountain and you'll wash your feet in it, and you must remember, help is coming. When you find yourself in Hell, keep walking, you are not alone."

"That it?" Dean asks.

"That's it." The oracle replies calmly. "We'll meet three times all in all before the favour is paid, after that I don't know. You'll see me again, Dean Winchester." Having emptied his plate he stands up, throwing a few dollars on to the table for the bill. "How long has it been since you spoke to your Dad?"

"You know my dad?" 

"A little," the oracle answers, "by reputation mostly. Things are starting," he tilts his head as if listening to invisible voices. "It's going to get hairy, but remember, help is coming when you find the fountain in the castle, you are not alone. It's important you know that." Then he turns and walks away.

 

\---

Dean waits until he's back at the motel before he phones his dad. It goes straight to voice mail. Dean isn't worried despite the sour taste in his mouth. His dad has gone quiet for stretches before. It's good. He'll just find himself another hunt before he worries. His dad's a grown man, he can look after himself.


End file.
